


Three Moons

by Warp5Complex_Archivist



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-28
Updated: 2006-02-28
Packaged: 2018-08-15 21:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8073136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warp5Complex_Archivist/pseuds/Warp5Complex_Archivist
Summary: Even the greatest of tragedies can be overcome. (08/16/2004)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Kylie Lee, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Warp 5 Complex](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Warp_5_Complex), the software of which ceased to be maintained and created a security hazard. To make future maintenance and archive growth easier, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but I may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Warp 5 Complex collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Warp5Complex).

Malcolm feels the silence bear down on him in the night.

"I'm not doing this anymore," she says finally.

His glass tumbler slips to the floor, where it shatters into a thousand splintering shards. Exhaling, his breath permeates every atom of decompressed, re-circulated air. He's known she would leave him, eventually.

Hoshi sits upright in bed. She's tired of another night of sobbing into their bland bedsheets. The starlight outside the window casts a blue halo around her hair and bare shoulders, and suddenly he realizes a truth he's been ignoring.

They are no longer themselves as they could once claim to be. When they lost Ava nearly a year ago, everything changed between them. They'd become forced to define themselves without her in their lives. Now they can only be considered broken and too deliberate in their actions, and Malcolm knows that if he'd been emotionally constructed to deal with his grief, he might have been able to provide Hoshi the strength she needed. Instead, every inch of his body feels numb except the part that aches for his daughter, and it is wholly unfair to the woman he's loved.

Outside the glass window, three moons hang in the night. On this colonized world they now call home, they've tried moving on together. Murmurs of having another child, feeling each other in the dark as they make love like they think they may have before, and always talking. The talking never ends.

"Did you cut yourself?" she asks him, but full concern does not reach her swollen eyes.

"No," he murmurs, staring down at the wine pooling at his feet. "What did you say before that?" He kneels and uses his silk housecoat to caress the liquid from the floor, careful to leave the shards as they are so he can sweep them up.

She sighs with unrepressed frustration. "Why do you always avoid me like that? Can you blame me for feeling the way I do when you won't really talk to me?"

He sets his shoulders and examines the wall until he hears her rise. Guilty, he turns.

"I won't talk to you because I don't know what to say." Malcolm says, desperate in his frustration. "Perhaps if I knew how to make it all better, I would be able to tell you what you want to hear, but you cry for Ava every night—"

Hoshi cuts him off and pulls his face down to hers. Her large, dark eyes plead for the man she married. "Malcolm, I've tried as much as I can, because anything more would have killed me," she says. "Do you really think I'm crying for Ava? Well, you're wrong. You're so wrong."

She pauses then and lets her voice get soft. "I know there wasn't anything more that we could do for her. My mother used to tell me in times like these that life has a funny way of making you helpless. I miss Ava as much as you do," and she finishes, her voice cracking but her shoulders firm, "but I cry for us, Malcolm, and even more for you-because you can't."

His throat dries up, and for a moment, he hates that he deals with his emotions as only a good Reed man knows how.

Hoshi takes his silence the wrong way, and suddenly she pulls from him and flings her glass into the window. Malcolm winces as they shatter. There's a sea of glass on the floor.

"Say something!" she screams in anger, then she lunges at him, a heartbroken sob tearing from her throat. He feels her fists on his chest, her limbs flailing.

He wrestles her to the floor, remembering how she likes to murmur soft kisses into his neck, and slowly subdues her enough to pull her small form into his arms.

In the slight of her step and the bridge of her nose, he still sees everything he loves in her, but she is also a constant reminder of a little dark-haired girl who loved cherry popsicles. As her tears warm his neck, he feels thankful for the memory.

"Love, you're a goddess," he whispers to her. "Do you realize how good you are to me?"

Hoshi quiets and nuzzles his neck. Her breath is hot against his skin. "I'm too good for you," she sniffs, and Malcolm grins and feels he has no choice but to agree. Her arms snake up to curl around his waist.

"Yes, you are," he manages as his throat tightens. A cold gust of wind breezes in from the broken window, and he pulls her close. "I don't know what I would do without you."

Slowly, Malcolm rises to his feet and carries Hoshi through the islands of sparkling glass shards to the bed. She gazes warmly at him as he pulls the beige bedspread up to her neck and tucks her in, then turns to close the inner window and clean up the glass.

Glancing back at Hoshi's still form, he thinks that she has never looked more beautiful, so childlike as Ava was and yet just like herself, and he remembers everything they have been through once more. His heart feels warm, and every inch of his body lives as the winter wind that escaped into their bedroom chills his skin. He's thankful for that as well.

Outside, he sees three moons hanging in the night sky, stars speckled between.


End file.
